Xenforo as integrated part of static website... possible?

New member

I'm in the process of building a website from scratch. Below are the list of requirements I have. I'm hoping for some advice regarding the feasibility of using Xenforo for this purpose:

1) Make a BBS forum 'just another page' on the site, sharing exactly the same header and footer. The body styling of the forum page(s) themselves should be customizable to match the site's styling, including media-query-specific scaling of fonts and images.

2) Allow users to log in/out from anywhere on the site.

3) Pull post snippets / topics / etc as items of interest, which I can display anywhere on the site (as links to the forum content).

4) I need to be able to query user data for non-forum purposes (geo-targetting ads, etc), preferably through a forum-supported API.

5) Probably a whole bunch of other stuff I can't think of right now.

Basically, I want to build a website in which the forum is an important, but supplementary, player. The bulk of the content, including the home page, will be static content (either straight html or php-generated). But I need to be able to display and link to/from forum content within the site in a seamless, tightly-integrated manner.

Is Xenforo the right tool for the job, and if so, what resources are available to learn what I need to know to make it happen?

If Xenforo is not the right tool for the job, I'd sincerely appreciate any advice on what might be.

BTW: I'm a one-person shop experienced in html, css, php, and (some) js... but I have zero experience with forum software and minimal experience with CMS software outside WordPress. I'll be working on this full-time, but I'm only one guy, so the solution I'm looking for needs to be something one person can reasonably implement and - more importantly - maintain over the long run.

Well-known member

What he said: try the demo. You can set up pages and navigation for said pages, and yeah, such things as the option to login from anywhere on the site and matching styling are no problem. As far as featuring thread content, there's widgets and addon's. Most people just create a homepage and feature content there. Here's a few addon's in no particular order that might be helpful, mostly paid but some free:

BRANDING REMOVAL can be purchased HERE ($50) This is a complete rewrite of my popular portal system for XenForo. XenPorta is an article system and front-end that allows you to give a more professional look to the front-facing sections of your...

Make some extra changes for displaying your important content on your forums. In few steps you can make this: Thanks to this plugins you can: set image background set category (easy field) set link color set description color set category...

Thread Grid addon will allow you to get Grid of thread on selected forum. How does this addon work ? this addon pickup the first attachment of the thread so you can get a good layout for forum additional requirement : thread thumbnail addon...

Home-blog addon allow you to you get a latest thread of selected node on separate page with pagination like wordpress blog on xenforo with featured thread option with Custom image url if there is no attachment in thread Featured thread option...

New thread Grid Widget allow you to get grid widget with thumbnail with attachment Sidebar Option Screenshot How it works Install and activate the add-on as an ordinary xenforo plugin. and set widget as you like NOTE recently its...